Anyone who have ever visited St. Martial will probably either have seen or run across the obnoxious little demons known as Wailer Demons. Despite their diminutive size they can cause considerable discomfort and even physical damage with their high-pitched shrieks, which is also their main offensive weapon even though their scythe-like arms are also wickedly sharp.
I once took a series of assignments from a contact codenamed Hardcase who has his base of operations in St. Martial and deals with all manners of supernatural entities but who has specialized knowledge on the subject of demons.
The pay was good and ever since I enjoyed the hospitality of the Circle of Thorns, I've been especially adept at handling the forces of the supernatural (at least that is one good thing that came out of my lenghty stay in their crystal prisons - who knew I had the ability to absorb ambient energy and use it to strengthen my own powers?) I took the assignments Hardcase handed out. Unlike many other contacts and brokers I've dealt with during my time on the Rogue Isles, Hardcase was a brutally effective man who knew his subject matter and could actually provide me with useful intel before and after each assignment.
The Wailer Demons featured heavily in the assignments, sometimes even surprisingly so, and a picture began to form suggesting that the little pests weren't as demented as they led on. They were here to collect a soul which had been promised to them, but massive magical countermeasures had been built into a number of structures on the island, which directed the flow of supernatural energy away, weakening the creatures and in many ways they were acting like people deprived of water over a lenghty period of time because of that.
The assignments almost turned into an epic saga, and it was clear that strange things was going on in the shadows of St. Martial - even stranger than you would expect! Johnny Sonata, the powerful Capo running the better part of the island was in to his eyeballs in all of this, and it turned out that the rumours were true: he HAD in fact sold his soul for his marvellous vocal abilities. The Wailer Demons were merely here to collect, and expecting them, Johnny had fortified parts of the island to disrupt their power, confuse them and generally lead them away from him. Only problem was, that robbed of their real target, the demons were running amok and targeting anything that got in their way - and even worse, help was coming!
Venturing into the dark beneath the world, otherwise known as the sewer system, I waded through a sea of Wailer Demons, until finally, dripping with demonic ichor, I came upon our "something"; A Wailer Lord, a massive demon glowing with supernatural energy, it's shrieks demolishing walls and sewer pipes as it made it's way towards the surface.
Fortunately, powerful as the Wailer Lord was, it was not yet fully adjusted to our plane of existence and as such it was not at full strength. Even so the fight to take their creature down was fierce, and rocked that part of the sewer system, leaving most of it in ruin and I swear my ears were ringing for days afterwards.
Of course, in the end the Wailer Lord was stomped into the ground beneath my boot and dispelled from this plane - it's corpse made for a nice treat to barter with a certain Mage I have done business with in the past, and apart from a good workout, this last assignment for Hardcase proved quite profitable: Beating the crap out of a bunch of demons and good loot - what more can you ask for?
